


Reconnect

by TheElusiveOllie



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Anxiety, Canonical Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Series, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1859127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheElusiveOllie/pseuds/TheElusiveOllie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s 2:43 AM, Central Time, when Tim’s cell goes off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reconnect

It’s 2:43 AM, Central Time, when Tim’s cell goes off, abruptly jarring him from another generic nightmare. He answers groggily.

“What?”

“Tim?”

The voice is breathy and scared and undoubtedly feminine and he recognizes it at once. Every muscle in his body tightens.

“How did you get this number?” he demands harshly, suddenly very much alert.

She begins to explain but he hangs up. He doesn’t want to hear it. The next morning he blocks the number.

\--

After three weeks and no less than twenty missed and ignored calls from the “BLOCKED” number, Tim finally answers out of pure frustration.

“Look,” he snaps without preamble. “Believe me when I say you really shouldn’t contact me.”

“Tim, it’s important.” The voice still sounds scared, though less frantic than before. “I found us.”

Tim freezes.

“What do mean?” He tries to sound evasive, but his voice shakes.

“I mean, online. There’s a bunch of videos and everything. I - ”

Tim hangs up.

It takes almost two hours for his hands to stop shaking.

\--

“Stop calling this number,” Tim says wearily, two days later. “Please.”

“Aren’t you _worried?_ I’m _scared_ , Tim. There are things going on in these videos that I can’t remember ever happening!”

Tim’s heart plummets.

“Please tell me you didn’t watch them.”

“Might’ve been helpful if you pointed that out instead of hanging up?”

 _“Please_ tell me you didn’t watch them.”

“Who’s Alex Kralie?”

Tim hangs up. His phone buzzes urgently less than a minute later.

 _“What?”_ he hisses.

“Would you quit doing that? I’m trying to work out what’s going on here, and - ”

 _“Stop,”_ Tim interrupts. “Stop trying to figure it out. It won’t fix anything. It’ll just make things worse.”

He hangs up again. This time no one calls back. He ignores the question ticking away in the back of his skull over whether the last statement was meant to refer to her life or his own.

\--

He goes a full day without calls. Work is gruelling and life is far from idyllic, but even routine is a blissful, blessed relief from the living hell his life used to be. He realizes now that Alex might have been right, and leaving someone alive might not have been the best course of action. It wrenches Tim’s gut to know that he might have to give everything up all over again. It’s unbearably selfish of him to think this, he’s fully aware.

Then his phone vibrates angrily. He checks the caller ID and - _yep_. “BLOCKED.”

He doesn’t get a chance to say anything when he answers.

“What’s the ark?”

He hangs up. His blood pressure has no doubt just skyrocketed, at least according to the doubletime drumbeat thundering in his ribs.

His breathing is far too heavy.

Fuck.

It’s been months - _months_ \- since he’s felt this and _he doesn’t want to feel it again now._ Not now that things are _normal_.

(Kind of normal.)

(Almost normal.)

(Whatever.)

His phone rings again. He answers automatically.

His throat is too dry for the standard “hello” but that doesn’t seem to matter.

“Tim, answer me. What’s the ark?”

Tim swallows and tries to collect his thoughts from their scattered clumps. He thinks about the other end of the receiver and swallows again.

“We have to meet,” he miraculously manages to choke out. “Place in your area?”

“Fine.”

They agree on an address and hang up. Tim knows without a doubt that he’s made a really not-good mistake.

Again.

(And someone else will probably suffer the consequences.)

(Again.)

\--

The coffee shop is so painfully cliché that a lifetime and a half ago, Tim might have cracked a dry not-smirk and made some lazily sarcastic comment about the typical clientele. Brian would have nudged him playfully and -

Ah.

Well.

Tim doesn’t like to think about Brian.

Instead he sits down and orders coffee, black. He immediately drinks it hot, even if the stuff is only middling quality at best. It gives him a tiny stir of childish satisfaction as he sits there, downing his caffeine, quietly self-destructive in open rebellion of his doctor’s recommendation to avoid the substance because it increases anxiety and it’s bad for his nerves and what if he develops more cardiorespiratory problems on top of the ones he already has and etcetera and so on. He likes coffee; he read once that caffeine was good for one’s memory and, hell, maybe he could use that right about now.

(Lately he’s more often employed alcohol for the purpose of forgetting rather than caffeine for the purpose of remembering, but it might be good that he get into the habit of the latter again. Not that he _wants_ to remember, really - he’d much rather that past stay buried.)

(Unfortunately, the past has chosen to do the exact opposite.)

She enters and makes a beeline for his table.

“Okay,” she says immediately, no introductions necessary. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Tim runs a finger around the rim of the cheap paper cup, keeping his gaze rigidly fixed on its contents.

“I can’t,” he says carefully.

“You came all this way just to say that?”

Tim chances a glance up at her tone and is startled to see her half-smiling in a dry, withering way. His heart thuds painfully in his chest - that smile is just a little too reminiscent of Jay’s.

Now _there’s_ a name he’s deliberately avoided thinking about for some time.

 _God_ he wishes he were somewhere else right now.

“Look.” Tim’s eyes drop back to the coffee cup. All this time and people are still just not his forté. “There’s a reason for that, I promise. I just - ”

“What, can’t tell me?” She frowns. “Is that why your friend moved away? What's his - Jay?”

Now it feels like his throat is constricting which is just _grand_.

“No,” he forces out. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. His voice is shaking. Why is it shaking? Can she tell there’s a lump the size of Texas in his larynx? “That was - it’s complicated.”

“Then _explain_ it to me.” She sounds exasperated. Rightfully so.

Probably.

Yes.

Tim looks away with another pained swallow, eyebrows drawing together to form a hard V.

“Jay,” he begins slowly. “Got...involved. In something he shouldn’t have. It cost him and me and everyone around him a lot and if you get involved, you…” Tim’s eyes rove listlessly around the surroundings of the coffee shop as he thinks of the most delicate way to put it. “You won’t come out the same.”

“I just wanna know why the past - what? Three years of my life? - are so spotty.”

“You don’t.” Tim is staring at the table now, counting the coffee stains. “You really, really don’t.”

“Can’t I be the judge of that?”

“Jessica, _please.”_ Tim’s voice splinters a little as he says it. His eyes dart up in time to catch the bewilderment in her eyes. “I’ve spent my entire life in and out of hospitals. Since I was a _kid_. You really... _really_ don’t.”

“What’s that have to do with it?” Her voice is small. Small and scared, like the first time she called him.

Tim shuts his eyes. There’s heat and moisture gathering in the corners of his vision and he doesn’t want any of it.

“It’s important that you never contact me again,” Tim makes himself say it, gaze once again drawn to anywhere but Jessica’s confused, scared expression. “I know you want to know what’s going on, but it - ” Fuck, he can’t talk. His lungs have closed. “I can’t tell you. And believe me, _please,_ when I tell you that it's for your own sake.”

He throws a bill on the table and forces himself to leave, pawing at his jacket pocket for a bottle of medication he still carries out of habit but hasn’t had to break out for a very long time.

\--

Jessica calls him once more the next day. He doesn’t answer and she doesn’t leave a message.

\--

Tim deletes the MarbleHornets YouTube channel. He scrubbed his laptop of any of the old footage long before now but the memories still stick in the corners of his fragmented memory in unsightly lumps.

\--

There’s an article in the paper a few weeks later, about an apartment burned down in the next town over. The fire was contained quickly, but there’s still an included list of the now-homeless residents. He catches a name that might begin with a “J" and quickly flips the page over.

It could have been anyone.

Anyone.


End file.
